There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

by Hanif Abdurraqib

discuss his height and weight down to the inches and pounds. It never seemed to cross their minds that what was on the table in the discussion was never how large Tamir actually was or wasn’t, but how large and dangerous he was in the eyes of a police officer with a gun pointed at him. And that, of course, becomes malleable when filtered through the state and its desire to absolve itself of violence. So many police officers with guns on their hips or in their hands insist that they are afraid, depending on who the perpetrator is. They insist that they, themselves, feel small in the face of danger. Like Darren Wilson, invoking his five-year-old self to make sense of why he had to murder the massive, hulking black teenager who otherwise, surely, would have killed him. This weaving in and out of childhood is a convenient weapon, one not afforded to everyone.

city of finding out even if you ain’t fuckin’ around all that much,

My god, the greatest lies are told in the name of sports, in the name of teams and cities and the people in them.